


These friends disturbed a stone circle, what they unleashed was far more horrifying than they could imagine

by HelixDraxzonyx



Series: HelixDraxzonyx's Horror Shorts Collection [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Graphic Description, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-07 17:26:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21461773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelixDraxzonyx/pseuds/HelixDraxzonyx
Summary: A group of friends encounter a stone circle while on a hike. When one member of the group damages the stone circle by accident, they unwittingly release an ancient evil that is determined to kill them off one by one.
Series: HelixDraxzonyx's Horror Shorts Collection [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1547110
Kudos: 1





	These friends disturbed a stone circle, what they unleashed was far more horrifying than they could imagine

_The following is the final entry of a journal found at the scene of a Category 7 Occultic Disaster. All names and locations have been edited to prevent identification._

I must write this as quickly as I can, for I know that my life is close to its end. If it were possible for me to publish this online, I would, but the dangers involved are too great to allow for that, so I must write it here, and pray that someone finds this journal and shares my story. Whether anyone believes what I write, is another matter.

It began six days ago. My friends: Daniel, Emily, Rachael, Eric and Nathan, all joined me to go hiking in the hills not far from my home. We had heard of several Celtic ruins in the area, and since Eric is an aspiring archaeologist, it was agreed that we would go exploring. It was a beautiful day, and an easy trek. Nothing at all was suggestive of the horrors we would soon confront, nor that that day would be the last time we would all be together, alive, ever again. 

It was shortly after midday that we reached the wooded summit, and we stopped for a brief lunch. While eating and talking, Emily noticed what looked like a faint trail leading towards a more overgrown section of the forest. Eric was most eager to follow that trail, believing that something fascinating would lay off the beaten track, as it were. How right he was, but not in any way we could have imagined. Though the trail was overgrown, navigating it was no major trouble, especially for Nathan: our resident survival nut. 

It took us two hours to reach the end of the trail, where we came across a clearing, with a stone circle in the centre. Even now I recall seeing this clearing in satellite images, but not the stone circle. We wasted no time in taking a closer look. The stones were well worn from centuries of wind and rain, yet these marble boulders still retained quite clear engravings upon them. We looked to Eric to translate, but he conceded defeat, explaining that the engravings were not any form of Celtic script that he had ever encountered before. This only served to excite him, as he believed it may have been the language of a lost and forgotten Celtic tribe, one that had developed its own, unique language. We explored around some more, and that is when the fatal mistake was made. 

Nathan had been leaning against the tallest stone, more of a marble pillar really, when it shifted under his weight and gave way. It fell, and struck another stone. The pillar broke into many pieces, and the stone it hit split in half as well. For a few stunned seconds we stood in silence, and then we felt the harsh, bitter gale. The sun was sinking rapidly at this point, so we made the decision to camp out within the stone circle. We pushed the incident from our minds, and continued as normal. We laughed and joked, especially when we caught Daniel and Emily fornicating. That would come to be the last time we ever laughed again.

Dawn broke, and it did not take long for us to realise that our lives were in danger. Indeed, one of us had already perished. Rachael's scream shook off our drowsiness and alerted us to the horror. Nathan was dead. There was no way to deny it. His head had been ripped from his torso. Half of his spinal column was still attached. The look of immense horror upon his face will never leave my mind. What terrified us all the more was that he befell such a gruesome fate without any of us hearing a thing. Eric is a light sleeper, myself as well. Neither of us had heard Nathan's slaughter. No cry for help, no struggle, no nothing. Surely such a violent act would have made a noise, yet we were not roused from our slumber. 

It took several minutes for us to notice that he held a pocket knife in his right hand. For all the good it did him. The blade was clean, the edge keen and undamaged. For a brief moment I thought I saw a strange creature reflected in the steel of the blade before vanishing. I wrote it off as a shock-induced hallucination. I know now that what I saw was real. We called for help, and eventually the police arrived. We were asked so many questions, but it was clear none of us could possibly be the culprit. None of us could possess the strength required to pull a man's head off barehanded. We were released that evening, traumatised, nauseated, and fearful. That, was only the beginning.

At about 3am that night, I received a panicked call from Rachael. She said that she was being hunted by something. She said that she had seen some monster in her bathroom mirror, had made eye contact with it, and that ever since she has seen something stalking her in every reflection she came across. She was beside herself with fear, going on about some whispered voice in her head. I tried to get her to calm down but she was gripped by terror. The last words I heard from her were “we broke the seal. We set it loose.” I tried looking for her myself, I called the others, I called the police too. This town is not large, finding her should have been easy. It wasn't until the next day that we learned why we couldn't find her.

I was awoken by the police quite suddenly. I don't even remember falling asleep, but I must have done. They had found Rachael, but they told me that they could not show me her body. They only showed me a few belongings of hers, which had been found at the scene of her death. She had been found in a tree. Impaled upon a branch, to be precise. They did not say anything more about the nature of her death, only that they could not explain how she got into such a position. The coroner had placed her time of death at just after 3am. She had died right after calling me. Again we were questioned, again there was no way we could be connected to the tragedy. When I was joined by Eric, Daniel and Emily, that's when things took a turn for the bizarre. 

We had been looking at a police car, at our reflections upon the exterior. What we saw in that reflection was more than just us four survivors. I cannot find the right words to describe the creature. It was larger than us, but not by a lot. I would estimate that it would reach seven feet tall if it were to stand upright. It seemed to move about on all-fours however. Its limbs were long and slender, ending in five viciously clawed fingers and toes. Two contrastingly beautiful butterfly wings extended from its back, royal blue at the edges and azure in the centre. Much of its back was also occupied by tendrils of some description. Thin, writhing, and covered with barbs and hooks. A viciously barbed tail was visible as well, not unlike that of a certain famous alien. The face... dear God the face. It was vaguely reptilian, or perhaps more like that of a dinosaur, but with four black eyes. A red crest extended from the top of the head and reached towards the wings. The skin was olive in colour. We looked above and behind ourselves, to where the creature should have been, but nothing was there. We turned back to the reflection, and it was gone. We thought to say something to the police, but how could they believe us? We remained together once we were dismissed, and it was an hour later that I began to formulate a theory.

Rachael had said that we had broken a seal, and that we had set something free. This I explained to my friends. “What if she was telling the truth? What if that stone circle had really been some kind of prison, and this creature the inhabitant?” Eric looked set to argue the theory, but he could not, and remained silent. I pressed on with my theory. Rachael had also mentioned seeing a creature in the reflection of her bathroom mirror, and that it seemed to stalk her through reflective surfaces. What if that too was true? What if we had awoken some kind of supernatural being that lived in reflections? This time Daniel was set to argue, and he had something to say. “If they live in reflections, how did it kill Rachael? How did it kill Nathan?” I will admit, I wasn't sure at the time, but I presented the crux of my theory all the same. “What if it is able to cross over at the moment where it catches up with our reflection? This thing is clearly not something that obeys the normal laws of reality. What if reflections are merely gateways to another dimension? What if it has the power to traverse said dimensions? Unless you have a better theory, then I think we should proceed as though this one is correct.” No other theories were posed. All that remained was to think of a way to protect ourselves from this monster. 

I suggested covering up all reflective surfaces. Mirrors, cutlery, door handles, literally everything. If it had a reflective surface, it needed to be covered. I also advised not making eye contact with the creature should it appear in a reflection, and to move away from wherever it seemed to lurk should they see it. Avoid looking at any exposed reflective surfaces until it seemed safe to continue. The hard part would be staying in contact with one another. I have a matt white landline phone. Very basic, no reflective surfaces. Eric has a similar model. He and Daniel both had a set of walkie-talkies that they'd kept since childhood. Nothing reflective on those either. Emily vowed to stick with Daniel. Safety in numbers, right? So, it seemed like we could stay in contact. What then? How long would we have to hide from reflections? Would that even be enough? I had no definite answers, only a theory that perhaps the creature would give up on us if it could not get to us. Either that, or perhaps it would fall into some kind of slumber. Naïvety, I have been told, is my biggest weakness. As I write this, I realise the truth of that.

A full day passed, with no casualties. We had all seen the creature several times as we covered up reflective surfaces, but my advice appeared to work. I would hide in the opposite corner of my room and avoid staring at reflections, even from the peripherals of my vision. My theory was aided by something we each came to observe: we could hear the creature when it was near. There was vague whispering, in a language none of us recognised. Yet, on some instinctive level, we seemed to know what the whispering meant. When the whispering stopped, it meant the monster had moved on. By the end of the third day, all reflective surfaces had been covered up. We called upon each other hourly, updating each other on our progress, trying our best to keep our spirits up in this trying ordeal. On the fourth day however, things took a turn for the worst.

Eric called me around about noon, his voice hollow and hopeless. The creature had struck again, and this time it claimed two lives. Both Emily and Daniel had been killed, though Eric was at a loss as to how the creature got to them. The police had told him that the pair had been found dead, though the specifics were apparently too gruesome for him to share them with me. He just talked aimlessly for a while. It wasn't until he mentioned that the two had been killed mid-coitus that I finally figured out what happened: they had each seen the creature reflected in the other's eyes. That was the only explanation I could come up with. Eric had been furious, cursing wildly, blaming God and the world itself for this nightmare. I could hear his emotions taking control of him, but I couldn't stop him. The phone went dead as he hung up. 

Five hours passed. The police showed up, but I wouldn't let them enter. I told them that I was afraid I would die next if I did. They seemed to believe me. Eric had been found dead as well. Unlike the others, his cause of death was suicide. He had gone to the roof of his apartment complex and thrown himself off of it. The police left me alone soon after.

I spent all of yesterday numb from grief. I couldn't cry any more. I had no more tears left. My bottles of water had been replaced with bottles of urine. My food supplies were almost gone. I never planned for anything like this. How could I? My sanity has threatened to leave me, and my courage is hanging by a thread. It was only a few hours ago that I realised that I need to stay alive a while longer yet. I need to let people know what happened to my friends and I. So I took up my pen and began writing at dawn today. Please, if you read this: stay away. Stay away from stone circles. Do not disturb the prisons of Demons. One is already loose, and who knows where it can go to? Do not trust reflections, for the Demon could be hiding within it. I know not whether I will still be alive when this journal is found, but I fear I won't be. I can hear the whispering, but I can't understand why. Perhaps the creature is merely waiting patiently, hungrily, wearing out my sanity until I snap and expose a reflection that it may use to kill me. My only hope is that whoever finds this knows enough to put an end to this Demon. This, I fear, is the last the world will hear of Evelyn Whitechapel.

_The above extract was found by a classified Crisis Response Unit at the incident site designated RP-UK-07259331. The journal's owner was found in her bedroom, which had been locked from the inside. The details of her fate will not be shared in their entirety here due to their harrowing nature. She was found dead in her bed, bearing clear signs of having been thoroughly restrained while alive. Considerable quantities of semen, not Human, were found around the victim's genitalia and bedding. The cause of death has been recorded as Haemorrhagic Shock. Given the severity of the wounds to her abdominal region, death would have come on very quickly, but not instantaneously. The CRU Captain is reported to have placed her time of death as being 6 hours before being found, and that her journal had been completed no more than two hours before that. Details of how this was determined is classified. Point of entry for the creature was determined to be the pen that the victim had used to write, which was observed to be capable of providing a faint reflection. The pen was immediately and thoroughly destroyed. This incident, designated as case OD7-44981-5, has been cleared for publication by consent of The Director of The Institute, which is the only name that can be given for the organisation of which the Crisis Response Unit is a part. Conditions for the publication of this case file included the concealment of names, locations, dates, and any other pertinent information that would allow members of the public to locate the incident site. An additional condition was included: that the case file should contain a warning to all who read it. In addition to Miss Evelyn Whitechapel's advice about not disturbing stone circles, it is strongly advised that all readers should carry Sage upon their person at all times. The precise reason for this is classified, but it is permissible to say that the herb will grant the bearer protection from the creature, designated OLF-00818692-3. The whereabouts of this life-form are classified. Its identity, origin, and all other details bar what was included in the journal are classified. A full autopsy report for Evelyn Whitechapel is available upon request, but it is highly inadvisable due to the horrific nature of her demise. This concludes the publication of case file OD7-44981-5_

**ADDENDUM**  
_Upon the request of the CRU Captain, codename Orion, additional details regarding this case will now be disclosed. Upon arrival to the incident site, the CRU observed that the town, which will remain unnamed, was desolate, seemingly devoid of life and activity. Further investigation showed that the inhabitants of the town had all been wiped out. Very little evidence of conflict exists. The stone circle was located, repaired, and an occult ritual was held to re-purpose the circle, transforming it from a prison to a paranormal deterrent. Details of the ritual are classified. A Resettlement Program is underway to re-populate the town. A ghost town in this age, and on this scale, would attract global media attention, after all. Details of the Resettlement Program are classified. There is one final note to add to this report. Though OLF-00818692-3 was the sole inhabitant of the stone circle, it was not the only one of its kind that the CRU encountered. It was found with nineteen offspring. Further details regarding this point are classified. This concludes the addendum to case file OD7-44981-5._


End file.
